WinRAR 3.71

I believe winrar do provide a DLL which can be used in ur application, i know that coz psx_renamer used that. maybe we can use that. i will update u about it latter

Probably is an unauthorized dll because as long as I know winrar guys have shared only the decompression part of their tool.
Have you tried also if packiso can handle a 7zip with more files inside. I think it will be the best solution for renaming and archiving with lower space. Using the same logic of above you should have the same archive crc also with more files if these were renamed and set correctly.

those are hard compressable indeed and those 50mb is big difference

Yes, for example:

torrentzip/packps2 ---> 1000
winrar ---> 900/950 (sometimes also 800/850)

You probably understand the inverse.
Winrar at standard setting wins on all other compressor for Gamecube/Wii

Simply to find a compromise between best compression / sharing possibilities / wasted time in compression process.

I'm talking about "torrentzip vs. packiso for GC images" and I opened this thread to test winrar as an alternative and not about personal archiving preferences (for example I prefer to zip where possible, simply because it's more easy to rename, check, test and play).

winrar and lzma (packps2 uses lzma as we know) on default settings are using almost this same amount of system resources, so... why use old compressors if newer can do it better with this same speed/resources ? I wont understand this

well... I feel pretty good about using lzma as compressor for roms... not really wanna go back in time for rar, especially that its not noticably faster, and in case of Metroid Prime (U) i got 960mb archive with my settings (vs 1,14g rar)

maybe next year or so I'll start using nanozip.. but deffinately not rar

Probably you got 960mb with maximum compression settings, with standard compression you got the same of zip for 99% of gamecube discs, 50-100mb more than rar in best situation.
But as we know maximum compression settings takes more resources and you cannot use strange settings with packps2.

maybe next year or so I'll start using nanozip.. but deffinately not rar

so.. this 1 block will make what version ? europe ? japan ? or its just test for same checksums

1 block is the difference between my archive (made with winrar 3.71) and yours (made with winrar 3.80). In this case 1 block is around 600k, but probably can be less if we change block size and see if the needs is always 1 block.
So if you want to archive and share, one main uploader can make rar archives like I did and share the diff pars to make everyone else archive match.

In my opinion blocks can be downsized to 50kb, so for 1000 games you'll have 50mb.
Moreover if all archives compressed with the same version matches you can share like with packiso. The problem with winrar is that you cannot make your own program to compress because of copyright, but in all other aspects it should work like any other archive programs: same file attributes, same compressor version, same compression settings = same archive crc.

If you touch/click the file after setting it to 01/01/1980 it will become the actual (current) date again

You have to modify or copy the file to change in order last modify and creation date.

As I suspected, so probably it could be done. Need more results from other users, then we can try using the same winrar version.

ps. you can skip points 2/3 by simply drag and drop image into rmdtrash.exe

how come ? must be something in your OS

I don't know how do you managed it

The best way is to work with own .bat files

Here is a try: you need packps2, winrar (I used v3.71) and quickpar.

Games tested are 3 wide avaible:

Legend of Zelda, The - The Wind Waker (U) ---> size: 1163204188 crc32: 96D006C2
Metroid Prime (U) (v1.00) ---> size: 1234752507 crc32: 977C94A3
Star Fox Adventures (U) ---> size: 1181050994 crc32: E6EB4228

Do as follow:

1) Rename disc as in DB (uncompressed and make a backup)

2) Rename disc to .iso and start compressing it with packps2 until a .7z file is created in the same directory.

3) Now close prompt with "x" and you'll see .7z will be deleted, but you iso date has been set to 01/01/1980

4) Rename the disc to .gcm

5) Compress disc with winrar standard setting (simply righr click on file and winrar ---> add to "file_name.rar")

6) Repeat point 1-5 if you want to test it on all 3 discs.

7) Once compressed check with these pars how many blocks you need and report it here.